The present invention relates to novel hinge assembly for automobiles, trucks and the like, and more particularly to passenger and drivers doors that typically are hinged to only open outwards.
In order to ingress or egress from automobiles or other vehicles that have drivers and may carry passengers, the automotive manufactures have added doors. Generally the doors are mounted on a single hinge, where one half of the hinge is mounted onto the vertical door post of the body of the car, and the other half of the hinge is mounted onto a generally parallel door structure. This allows the hinge to open the door by swinging away from the vehicle, thereby providing an adequate amount of opening to exit the vehicle, since smaller vehicles have much smaller exit openings than the larger vehicles. Since automobiles and trucks are essentially rectangular in shape, the most common method of providing doors is to mount the hinge on a forward vertical edge of the door, allowing the trailing edge of the door to swing outwards and forward.
With the advent of more modern vehicles, the manufacturers have incorporated aerodynamic shapes in order top provide a more fuel efficient and a more aesthetically pleasing shape to the vehicle. Safety engineers have also had major input into the design of the doors, in order to provide the maximum amount of safety both pre and post collision. One of the most glaring negative aspects of having doors open along the vertical forward edge of the door is that a large amount of room is needed in order to swing the door open to it's greatest opening area.
There have been many efforts to revise the opening method of automobile doors not only for aesthetic purposes, but also for safety, in order to provide improved ingress and egress for passengers. In an effort to modernize the door assemblies to more effectively accommodate the complexity and sophistication of modern automotive and truck design, some manufacturers have incorporated non-standard door assemblies.
Mercedes, and BMW have incorporated the “Gull wing” designs into a limited number of their vehicle designs. Delorean has also incorporated a non-standard door assembly, by allowing the door to rotate along its top edge to provide an opening for the driver and passenger. The Lamborghini Countach has doors which pivot vertically about the top forward edge of the doors. These doors, however, were only used in show cars and a small number of limited production cars.